Here’s our first look at Kia’s EV9 three-row electric SUV

SEOUL, KOREA—In 2021, Kia used that year’s Los Angeles Auto Show to debut a new electric concept called the EV9. Today, Kia took the wraps off the production version, which goes on sale in the second half of this year. The production EV9 is definitely an evolution of the show car but with some of the concept’s more outrageous design details toned down a bit.

It’s a large three-row SUV that uses Kia and Hyundai’s advanced new electric vehicle platform called E-GMP, which has already impressed us and many others in new EVs like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia’s EV6. Those two are smaller crossovers, but the EV9 is bringing that 800 V technology to a larger vehicle, one that should be well-suited to North American tastes.

“The journey over the last couple of years to get to where we are now in terms of design could only happen when designers and brands work together, and this design philosophy—opposites united—is very much based on that idea of movement and richness through movement,” explained Karim Habib, head of Kia Global Design. “It’s about the juxtaposition of [a] man-made structure in nature and how that contrast actually can be very beautiful or even within nature itself.”

“As one example, you’ll see that we have these very high, very boxy, triangular fenders,” Habib said. “But at the same time, we have a very sleek body with a very low center of gravity. A low center of gravity for an SUV is a bit unusual. We also had a pretty low belt line, so a lot of glass.”

The most obvious changes are more normal headlights at the front—although the distinctive vertical daylight running lights made the transition from concept to production unscathed, evoking Kia’s “tiger nose” grille without an actual grille. Size-wise, it’s three inches shorter in length than the Kia Telluride SUV, albeit with a significantly longer wheelbase, and it’s an inch taller and three inches wider than the conventionally powered Telluride.

Interior space was an important consideration. “This is on our dedicated E-GMP architecture,” Habib explained. “So we wanted to take full advantage of that with a flat floor. You’ll see on the dashboard, on the doors, on the console, we’re not just working with the object itself, but we really tried to work on the spacing between the objects,” he said, referring to the use of negative space juxtaposed with the screens on the EV9’s dash.

That interior is much more conventional than the EV9 concept car’s, particularly the steering wheel, which is now completely normal compared to the rhomboid device we saw in 2021.

Refreshingly, there is not a single bit of piano-black trim anywhere in the interior.

“We have consciously not used piano black,” explained Jochen Paesen, vice president of interior design at Kia. “We’re using a middle gray; it’s in both matte and gloss. But as you see, the combination between matte and gloss is what makes it feel refined rather than just having a lot of gloss material. So it gives you a modernity, we feel. The black gloss has had its time—we can do without it,” Paesen told Ars.